Liz Casteel and Tasha Krug are Honda engineers who competed together as Team Sand Mode in the 2019 Rebelle Rally, a grueling 1,500-mile off-road competition for women. These extraordinary engineers from Honda R&D Americas tackled the competition to pursue their outdoor passions and push the company’s future innovations to the next level. As the recipients of the Rebelle Rally Rookie of the Year award and Third Place winners in the Crossover Class, these superstars have proven that they can handle the toughest of challenges. Passionate and fearless women like them drive Honda forward with their challenging spirit.

What do you do at Honda?

Liz Casteel (LC): I’m a chassis reliability test engineer and that means I work on the suspension and frame of the car, to test and make sure it stays reliable for the life of the vehicle. So, in real-world terms, I check to make sure that your car lasts and will be okay when you run over potholes or railroad tracks, or hit curbs. …

By Yvette Hunsicker, Vice President Human Resources & Inclusion and Diversity at Honda North America Inc.

I joined Honda three decades ago as a production associate in the weld department of our Marysville Auto Plant in rural Ohio. Honda had become the first Japanese automaker to build cars in America seven years earlier and as a woman of color in a predominately white and male environment, well, let’s just say being different and new made for some challenging days.

Today, I’m a vice president of Human Resources at Honda, and I lead our Office of Inclusion and Diversity. So, my job includes guiding the effort to bring younger versions of myself to the company and create an environment where young people of different backgrounds can contribute to Honda’s success. …

By Lara Harrington, Chief Engineer and Honda Passport Development Leader

When I was young, I couldn’t see myself in the way most women were portrayed in the media. I liked to work with my hands, and my father — a classic do-it-yourselfer — didn’t hesitate to involve me when he was out in the garage working under the hood of the car.

These opportunities fueled my own passion for working on mechanical things, but as a young woman, I questioned whether I had the confidence to pursue a non-traditional career path.

I’m now some four decades removed from that critical time in my life, and I’ve spent most of my professional career as a Honda R&D engineer. In fact, I’m proud to be the first woman to serve as the development leader for a new vehicle at Honda, the Honda Passport. …

By Ryan Harty, Manager, Connected and Environmental Business Development, American Honda

Standing on this windswept stretch of central Oklahoma, it’s hard to imagine the connection this land will have to reducing CO2 emissions for an auto manufacturing plant a thousand miles east in central Ohio. But it’s our job to imagine the future we want to achieve. So the wind turbines that will soon dot this landscape are pivotal to Honda’s plan to reduce CO2 emissions from our North American auto manufacturing plants by more than 60 percent.

CO2 from burning fossil fuels over the past century has changed our climate. We need to change our business in response. We have to change the energy that powers not just our operations, but also our entire society, from fossil fuels to zero-carbon sources as soon as we can. Tackling CO2 emissions is the biggest challenge that our business and our society face today. …